Biblical Lamentations & William Billings' Lamentation Over Boston

Master Chorus Eastside is deep in preparation for our fun and informal All-American Independence Celebration in honor of July 4, and I’ve become fascinated by the connections between one of our pieces, William Billings’ Lamentation Over Boston, and the Bible.  There is a kind of hidden message here, maybe not too surprising in light of its Revolutionary War context, but one that sheds some light on Billings and his music.

Billings (1746-1800) was a Bostonian, a tanner by trade, and a self-taught singing master in colonial America.  As singing masters did he set up singing schools that taught residents how to sing and read music, with a kind of graduation concert at the end of a three-month term.  And as singing masters also did, he wrote his own instructional materials, called tune books, that overflowed with distinctive choral music.

Billings was America’s first noteworthy, native-born composer, and the first singing master to publish tune books wholly devoted to American compositions, mainly his own.  Several of his tune books were immensely popular, especially as resistance toward British overreach began to heat up in the Boston area.

Several incidents in Boston inflamed public opinion against the Crown, such as the Stamp Act of 1764 (England’s attempt to increase revenue through its overseas colonial investments), and armed soldiers to guard customs officials in 1768.  Some considered these soldiers an occupying army.  But the Boston Massacre of 1770, in which British troops fired upon an unruly crowd and killed five colonists, was the final straw, and led directly to the opening rounds of the Revolutionary War in 1775.

Billings was in the right place—Boston, the birthplace of the Revolution—at the right time—the beginning of the war—to make a name for himself, and he proceeded to publish several tune books that contained virulently anti-British sentiment.  And in one of those tune books, The Singing Master’s Assistant (1778), appears Lamentation Over Boston, words by the fiery patriot Samuel Adams.

Psalm 137 begins the psalmist’s lament over Israel’s captivity by the kingdom of Babylon in this opening verse:

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.”

And here is the first line of Billings’ lamentation over the captivity of Boston by the British Empire, set as a dirge:

“By the Rivers of Watertown we sat down and wept when we remembered thee, O Boston.”

A river, weeping, remembering, a captive people, a tyrannical kingdom: the three-syllable Watertown even matches the three syllables of Babylon!

A bit later the poem paraphrases Jeremiah 3:21, “A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications of the children of Israel,” in this wise: “A voice was heard in Roxbury which echoed thro’ the Continent weeping for Boston because of their Danger,” decorated by Billings with various “weeping” motives.

It seems that Roxbury is known for its hilly geography!

Billings draws inspiration from Psalm 137 one last time in these final flights of poetic fancy from Lamentation Over Boston:

“If I forget thee...Then be my Muse be unkind, Then let my Tongue forget to move and ever be confin’d; let horrid jargon spill the Air and rive my nerves asunder, let hateful discord greet my ear as terrible as Thunder.  Let harmony be banish’d hence and Consonance depart; Let dissonance erect her throne and reign within my Heart.”

And here is the model, Psalm 137:3-6:

“For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.  How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?  If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.  If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.”

Billings paints the text in several clever ways: a long note on “move”, symbolic of an unmoving tongue; tumbling eighth notes above “rive my nerves asunder;” dissonances at “hateful discord;” open fifths over the last word of “let harmony be banish’d hence,” for example.

Clearly for Billings music was his chief joy; it could only dissolve into discord and dissonance, as he illustrates, should he forget the captivity of Boston.

In our day Adam’s paraphrases coupled with Billing’s music may sound overheated, a little incongruous, but they also hold a kind of primitive power.  Billings’ emotion was strong and real, and the language of the Bible was a lofty way in which to express his deepest feelings.  And the hidden message was clear: God was on America’s side!

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and conductor

Master Chorus Eastside